Gov: Union Negotiators Agreed To HSTA Contract
The Hawaii Department of Education on Friday implemented a new two-year contract with the state’s 12,700 teachers — one that the teachers union says it did not approve.
But Gov. Neil Abercrombie says that Hawaii State Teachers Association negotiators in fact shook hands on the agreement. The union’s board of directors later stepped in and refused to allow teachers to vote on it, he says.
“I think the HSTA negotiators were satisfied that they got the best possible deal they could,” Abercrombie said at a Friday press conference, lavishing praise on HSTA President Wil Okabe and Executive Director Al Nagasako for their leadership in bargaining talks. “But when they went to the board, the board refused to pass it on to the teachers to allow them to vote.”
Okabe responded that the governor “may not have been fully informed.”
“We took the state’s last, best and final offer to our Board of Directors,” Okabe wrote in an email to Civil Beat. “It was unanimously rejected as unworthy of a vote of our teachers.”
Former HSTA executive director Joan Husted told Civil Beat that the union board historically has not submitted a contract to teachers for a vote if the agreement did not first satisfy the board.
Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi and Gov. Neil Abercrombie announced on June 24, six days before the old contract expired, that negotiations with HSTA had reached an impasse, and that the Department of Education planned to move implement their “last, best, final offer” beginning July 1.
The offer includes:
- 1.5 percent reduction in teachers’ salary schedule and acceptance of leave without pay on certain non-instructional days for a total temporary wage reduction equivalent to 5 percent;
- 50-50 split of employer/employee contributions for health benefits; and
- Increased preparation time for teachers
Union leaders have maintained that there never was any agreement and that they plan to challenge the state’s decision to force it on teachers, with either the or in Circuit Court.
“After months of progress at the negotiating table we are left with one option – we are legally challenging the superintendent’s order to unilaterally implement the last, best, and final offer,” Okabe told Civil Beat in an email.
“Teachers care about children. We donate an average of 13 hours a week of unpaid time to our students after the school day. We spend money out of our own pocket to buy school supplies for our classrooms. Teachers care about their legal rights as well. And we must defend those rights.”
Regardless of whether negotiators shook hands on the agreement, the state by law has the authority to implement a contract, according to the governor’s office.
Abercrombie’s role in the labor contract negotiations is laid out in . According to the statute, the governor has three votes in negotiations with teachers, the Hawaii State Board of Education has two and the superintendent has one. The six votes combined compose the employer side of collective bargaining. The union’s negotiating team does not have a set number of votes, but contracts are typically ratified by union members before they are implemented. (Read more about the collective bargaining process here.)
“All the negotiators, all the parties came to what we think is an honorable, sensible conclusion that’s in the best interests of the children in the present fiscal context,” Abercrombie said Friday. “I know the superintendent, the Board of Education and myself would like very much for the teachers to have an opportunity to take a look at what we’ve accomplished.”
“I think (teachers) will conclude that we’re all in this together,” he said. “This is not teachers versus the state or the Board of Education and the superintendent versus the union. That’s not what this is about — it’s never been that. This has always been a discussion about what do we need to do to get the best possible foundation we can so that we can get teachers back in the classroom and students learning to think critically.”
—Chad Blair and Nanea Kalani contributed to this report.
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